It’s been a while since you’ve heard from us. In fact, our last real entry on our “Stories” page was about EMBRACE THE VOID which launched almost a year ago to the day!

What have we been up to? Have we disappeared? Did we just attain wild success with Evangeline and abandon all intent to ever return to this wild medium of storytelling?

Not exactly! In fact, we’ve been hard at work on the future.

The future. What a weird, noncommittal, ambiguous term! Hopefully I’ll demystify things a bit in this post. I’ll discuss the three big things on our plate right now.

First: Evangeline has launched on Jump! It’s a really badass indie game subscription service where for $4.99 a month, you gain access to over one hundred really cool indie games. The folks at Jump were kind enough to include Evangeline, and after going through the process of porting to their platform, we’ve successfully launched there!

This version includes new content (!!!!) not currently on Steam. These include wonderful little additions to the world made possible by our artist Emily Hargis (rock on, Emily!). You’ll notice lemonade stands, swing sets, extra foliage, and more throughout the world. It makes it feel a little more lived-in, and Emily did a great job on that.

These features will eventually come to Steam at the same time as our Xbox port. Which leads me into the next thing: Evangeline on Xbox!

It’s still coming. And if we play our cards right, it’ll arrive by the end of 2018. To say that this is an easy endeavor is… incorrect. Jump was our first completed port, but we’ve been working on the Xbox version since before then. Jump taught us some hard lessons about what the reality of the porting process is; things break or don’t work for no reason, new bugs are introduced, performance drops without a cause, etc.

We ended up devoting the majority of our efforts towards the Jump version, which ultimately meant that progress was slower on the Xbox version. But it’s still on the way! Luckily, the work we did on Jump overlaps with things we needed to accomplish in the Xbox version, so things are starting back up again and will go more quickly as a result. Look for that later this year on an Xbox near you.

So, we’ve been riding the Evangeline Wave since December 2016 when our gif of the game went viral… what’s next? Do we have anything left? Are we just the “Evangeline” company at this point?

Not so!

We’ve been a little quiet as to our next project, but if you’ve paid close attention to my social feeds – and other things the company sent out last year – you may recall something about a puppy.

Project Rose. Ah, Rose, the greatest game that isn’t out yet!

TL;DR: Last year we went on a quest to build it, get funded, and ship an amazing game. That quest failed.

Why? Because it wasn’t the right time.

Ultimately, we made something that we were proud of — a short demonstration of our vision — but it wasn’t appealing to the 10+ groups we showed it to. At the end of the day, we ended up canceling the project to be revisited at a later date and instead focused on bringing Evangeline to more people.

Well, luckily for you, I’m a hopeless romantic, a big ol’ sap, and overall a dude who is easily swayed by “the dream.” As 2017 went on, I just couldn’t stop thinking about this game — this beautiful, wonderful, ambitious tale of a lost dog trying to find her way back home.

It was stuck in my bones. It was tied up in my soul. It was all I could think about. Around the end of 2017, I briefly explored another potential funding route that was at the bottom of my list — it didn’t pan out.

And when it didn’t, I smiled.

Rose was back.

So, I thought: Could I get the team on board? Maybe my delusions are just that, delusions, and no one would want to go back to this game. After all, we burned ourselves out trying to sell it to publishers and funding sources, and it was our most fresh failure.

Everyone signed up without hesitation.

Not only did we get everyone from the Evangeline team back on board, but we brought some old and new friends back into the fray for another big Raconteur roller coaster.

Forgive me if I’m sappy here, but as it turns out, we stand for something here at Raconteur. It’s not about attaining some huge level of success; it’s not about making something for the sake of making something; it’s about making something meaningful that impacts players, and if we’re lucky, leaves the world a better place than we found it.

Evangeline’s bet was not on the color mechanic or the story or anything within the game; the bet was that players would trust us to follow the prompt at the end and decide to connect with a loved one. They did. This was so encouraging to see! Our medium was being used in such a simple yet novel way — to bring people together.

And that’s what we’re about at Raconteur. We tell stories that will hopefully leave the world a better place than we found it.

Anyway, maybe I am delusional, but we’re making Project Rose once again. This time, the project is rebooted with a new vision and a fantastic art style (watch my twitter for sneak peeks!) that blows our 2017 idea out of the water.

We’re pushing on, and that’s our future. We’re daring to make something beautiful and wonderful and heartfelt that will make you think about games differently.

There’s no date on this game yet. I couldn’t even possibly begin to tell you when it’ll be done or if it’ll be funded, but we’re making it.

And that’s it! Evangeline is coming to Xbox later this year, Project Rose will be finished one day, and Raconteur continues our mission of telling stories.

We’ll have more to talk about soon, but for now, we’ve got to get back to the campfire and tell our stories. Speaking of that, we have a new episode of the Campfire Podcast here! (Features Kermit and Gilmore Girls.)

Until next time, friends.

P.S.: Here’s a look at Rose:

-Nick

]]>http://raconteurgames.com/we-dare-the-future-of-raconteur-games/feed/02180The Void is Callinghttp://raconteurgames.com/story-15-the-void-is-calling/
http://raconteurgames.com/story-15-the-void-is-calling/#respondTue, 30 May 2017 15:58:30 +0000http://raconteurgames.com/?p=2064The world is a stressful place, and things like social media don’t serve to decrease that stress.

We felt very trapped by the constant barrage of downtrodden news from the first half of 2017, so we decided to channel our existential dread in the best way possible: making a game!

EMBRACE THE VOID is a short (and free!) stress relief simulator where you can toss the anxieties of modern life into a gaping black hole.

Loosely inspired by John Oliver’s “Scream Into The Void,” players are rewarded for letting go of their worries and embracing the void that we call modern life.

You can grab it on itch.io completely free and get relief from the world around you!

]]>http://raconteurgames.com/story-15-the-void-is-calling/feed/02064It Was All For Lovehttp://raconteurgames.com/story-14-it-was-all-for-love/
http://raconteurgames.com/story-14-it-was-all-for-love/#respondTue, 30 May 2017 15:46:41 +0000http://raconteurgames.com/?p=2056Evangeline is a 15-minute narrative game about connecting with someone you love.

Inspired by the loss of our founder Nicholas’ grandfather last year, and on top of 2016 being a rough year internationally, nationally, and locally, it’s a short, sappy game meant to put more love and kindness into the world.

On February 10th, 2017, we released this lovely little game to the world, and it brought us incredible joy.

More important than anything else, Evangeline taught us that we are incredibly interested in a new aspect of game design: incorporating a real-world action into the game. We won’t reveal what that was in this blog post — it would ruin the experience (so please pick it up if you want to see for yourself!).

Evangeline is our greatest work yet, and we are incredibly proud of this game that we hope will stand the test of time.

]]>http://raconteurgames.com/story-14-it-was-all-for-love/feed/02056Healedhttp://raconteurgames.com/story-13-healed/
http://raconteurgames.com/story-13-healed/#respondTue, 30 May 2017 15:17:50 +0000http://raconteurgames.com/?p=2053The term Traiteur is a Cajun word for a faith healer.

After a long and difficult process of making and releasing Close Order, we pursued Traiteur as a cathartic healing process to make a game quickly and effectively.

Unfortunately, our ambitions were too great and it hurt the project. Not only were we pursuing an oddly specific art style that was incredibly difficult to find someone to create, but we had trouble expanding the game outside of its narrative and into a compelling game that was fun to play.

We had to face a sobering reality check: Traiteur was not very fun, and although we were attached to it, the writing was on the wall.

On one of our first days of 2017, we canceled Traiteur and put our full focus on Evangeline.

To us, failure does not mean that the world is over; quite the contrary. Failure means one of two things: either 1) you gave up because things got too difficult and you chose not to go on, or 2) you completed something but did not achieve your desired outcome and learned nothing in the process.

By that definition we have never failed, and Traiteur was not a failure! We learned a ton of important things that ultimately made Evangeline, and our future projects, much better, including:

Early testing with non-friends and family

Focusing equally on narrative and gameplay in the beginning stages; if anything, gameplay should be built and then story should be tailored around it, not the inverse (which is what we did)

Managing risks in how we want to pursue specific features or visual styles

And much, much more!

Traiteur was a fantastic learning experience. It was not easy to say goodbye, and it will most definitely live on in our hearts. Ultimately, this led to our entire focus being on Evangeline, which Traiteur‘s lessons heavily influenced.

]]>http://raconteurgames.com/story-13-healed/feed/02053Viral, But Not Sicklyhttp://raconteurgames.com/story-12-viral-but-not-sickly/
http://raconteurgames.com/story-12-viral-but-not-sickly/#respondTue, 30 May 2017 15:06:33 +0000http://raconteurgames.com/?p=2048Evangeline was developed somewhat in a vacuum, which is contrary to our typical development style of being very open during production.

Due to the nature of the game’s narrative and our design goals with the experience, it was difficult to talk about the game in any capacity except its fullest — and of course we weren’t going to give it all away!

A primary mechanic of the game was color guiding the player through the world. The entire game world was monochrome/greyscale, and certain objects or actions would return color to the world to guide you towards your objective.

On a whim and for no particular reason at all, Nicholas decided to make a four-second .gif of this mechanic and posted it to reddit without thinking much of it.

As it turns out, that thoughtless action led to 1.6 MILLION (!!!) views and over 1000 comments across reddit and imgur. Evangeline hit the big time, and we knew we had something special.

Organize your Inspector window with spaces between values, tooltips that appear on hover, and hidden public fields!

Weekly Unity Gif is a feature from the tech team at Raconteur Games that compresses Unity tips and tricks into simple, digestible gifs. We got the idea from Umar Hansa, who generously allowed us to use the same format for Unity instead of web development. We’ll be sending out new tips every Wednesday – stay tuned! You can follow us at @RaconteurDev and @RaconteurSander!

Weekly Unity Gif is a feature from the tech team at Raconteur Games that compresses Unity tips and tricks into simple, digestible gifs. We got the idea from Umar Hansa, who generously allowed us to use the same format for Unity instead of web development. We’ll be sending out new tips every Wednesday – stay tuned! You can follow us at @RaconteurDev and @RaconteurSander!

NOTE: See this post for information on why using structs solely for the visual effect of collapsible fields isn’t a good idea. Thanks, u/araxsmoth!

Weekly Unity Gif is a feature from the tech team at Raconteur Games that compresses Unity tips and tricks into simple, digestible gifs. We got the idea from Umar Hansa, who generously allowed us to use the same format for Unity instead of web development. We’ll be sending out new tips every Wednesday – stay tuned! You can follow us at @RaconteurDev and @RaconteurSander!

If you’d like to make your own starting template for new scripts in Unity, you’re in luck! Follow along with the gif above to clean up the default template or to make your own starting point.

Weekly Unity Gif is a feature from the tech team at Raconteur Games that compresses Unity tips and tricks into simple, digestible gifs. We got the idea from Umar Hansa, who generously allowed us to use the same format for Unity instead of web development. We’ll be sending out new tips every Wednesday – stay tuned! You can follow us at @RaconteurDev and @RaconteurSander!

This week, we have news that may seem bad, but it’s actually very, very good.

Traiteur will not launch in January as planned.

This happened because during Traiteur‘s production cycle, I lost a family member and that hit me quite hard. I had a long grieving process. In that mourning period, I wanted to create something that could help other people appreciate their loved ones while they still had them.

The result is a game called Evangeline, and it’s launching on January 20th, 2017 at evangelinegame.com (at the time of publication the site isn’t live yet, but save that link!).

The game was initially a low priority project that we wanted to keep incubated on the side, but much to our surprise, it rose to greater commercial, creative, and personal importance. It’s now in the final stretch, and we need all hands on deck to help finish up the game to the quality we envisioned.

By focusing exclusively on Evangeline, we will be able to come back to Traiteur with even more knowledge, time, and most importantly, love.

It’s never a fun thing to have to say that your project is going dark, but this is for the ones we love — and when you make a decision like that, it’s always for the better.

This will be our last dev blog until early 2017. What a weird thing to say! We thank everyone who has been with us since the beginning of the project.

Now, we’ll turn our hearts towards Evangeline, a little game with a big goal: pick up the phone and call someone you care about.

Our post today relates to something I feel is very important in gaming: the little, minute details. Let’s embark upon a journey of tiny proportions!

The little things

This morning, I discovered a tweet relating to Dishonored 2 (which I’m super thrilled about playing!). Someone noticed that if you took a wine bottle away from a man who was being painted for a portrait, the final portrait (when finished) wouldn’t have the wine in it.

Not long after that, I saw a journalist showing a gif of how Hitman (2016) has hyper-realistic detail regarding condensation on a bathroom mirror.

These things may seem small and insignificant — and they absolutely are. But this is what separates a good game from a great one — these small marks of craftsmanship!

Reality is full of insignificant, smaller details. We don’t pay attention to them there, because reality as a whole is one giant context without context. In a game world, though, you’re walking around the vision of someone else. These small details give insight into what that person prioritized, what they see as important, how they conceive this fake reality.

So while you may never even notice the wine being missing from the portrait, or the mirror having condensation, these small marks of detail separate a game from a game world.

We have a few details like this in Traiteur, and I hope you’ll look for them. :)

We’ve got another brief update this week about the future and what we’re working towards; next week, we’ll have another more in-depth look at the game.

For now, let’s grab marshmallows and gather ’round the campfire!

The future

Right now, Raconteur is looking for more funding. As I type this, I just finished up a proposal to a private investor on what we need and how we’re going to move forward into the future.

We have a ton of confidence in Traiteur as well as our other upcoming experimental narrative game, Evangeline! Both games represent a major step forward in how we tell stories, how we develop games, and how we envision our story-filled future.

As we’ve mentioned before, we picked the name Traiteur due to our feelings of needing catharsis after our first game Close Order. To us, this game is quite literally healing and proof that we can indeed make games and tell stories people are interested in!

To be honest, it can be weird pitching our games to people. A question I commonly get is, “What kind of games do you make?” With a big grin and a genuinely interested response of, “That’s my favorite question — all kinds!” I paint the picture of what lay ahead in 2017.

A game about emoticons going to war. A game about connecting with loved ones. A series of experimental ideas that are grand in ambition but reasonable in scope.

Stories we want to tell.

At the end of the day, financial success is a good thing, but we don’t define success financially. We define it as having persevered to bring our vision to life, and learn everything possible along the way from it.

In this world, stories are what keep us going — and our story is one of perseverance. Perseverance through tough times, through success and failure, through rejection after rejection, through all-time highs and record lows… we keep going.

And while you may never know that when actually playing our games, it’s a story we like to tell.

We don’t give up.

I’ll see you next week with more Traiteur. :) Oh, and if you want to help us test the game – send an email to info-at-raconteurgames-dot-com with the subject line “Traiteur Playtesting”!

This week, we’re celebrating a milestone — 20 weeks of dev bloggery! We’ll be looking back at what’s been covered in previous weeks, as well as a sneak peek into what’s ahead.

Let’s go!

Recap

At the onset, we gave you an insight into the game itself. It’s an ASCII world mixed with adventure and top-down shooter elements, where emoticons are going to war — and you are the only one who can stop it!

Then, we went deeper into gameplay and the systems at play within the game. Colorful characters, embedded storylines, and more await you in the Emotian Kingdom! (As you’ll know from recent posts, we’re streamlining our vision a bit, but that post still applies!)

Along the way, we introduced you to some of our Raconteurs that are bringing this crazy world to life: Elise, our sound designer, and Sander, our lead programmer. After that, we gave you a glimpse into early gameplay and how the game looks in motion, and we followed up with a FAQ about the game.

It’s been quite a journey! We’ve built and grown our little community, taken feedback from you that has shaped the game (like how we’re going to add customization elements to the player character!), and documented our ups and downs.

This has been such a wonderful challenge, an exciting commitment, and so many other things. I’m thankful for every single one of you that has come back week after week to learn more about the game and to see what we have to say.

Join us next week as we give you another visual update on where the game currently is!

I’m Sander, Raconteur’s lead programmer! I write for some of our games, including this one, and design the structure of the systems in Traiteur.

Q: What inspired you to want to work on Traiteur?

The scope and focus of the game were the main attractions for me – we wanted a smaller project after our last one, and it was an opportunity to concentrate on gameplay mechanics and raw storytelling instead of the increased work with graphics that’s gone into our other released game, Close Order. I saw it as a fun, lighthearted project to work on, and I was really excited by that idea!

I also loved the opportunity to play with the different aesthetic of the game – I really like exploring every nook and cranny that an idea has to offer, and the ASCII graphics and setting lend themselves perfectly to all sorts of fun nuances and details in the game and story.

Q: Describe the game in 10 words or less.

Fast, fun, challenging, and sharpened storytelling experiment!

Q: How does the game’s ASCII setting create challenges in your role in the game’s production?

ASCII art means that we have to stay committed to the rules we set up for our game world. It’s such a precise and unforgiving style that we need to make sure our artists are the best at their craft and are able to turn out environments that actually make sense to the player. It’d be easy to retreat into a style like Dwarf Fortress that takes some getting used to, but we want to play around with making an ASCII style immediately accessible.

The art and the gameplay! It’s been a joy to see the art spring up around the gameplay that we built up – ideas can bounce off of each other and cause the other to grow really easily. It’s a blast to work with.

Q: Why on earth do you think someone should play this game when it’s done?!

The feeling you get from understanding and mastering the mechanics of the game in such a short time is thrilling – Traiteur is perfect for a break from in-depth strategy games, for instance. It’s a series of quick, immediate challenges, coupled with a lighthearted, memorable story and a few carefully fleshed-out systems. Play it for the feeling you get when you learn and master a new skill!

Thanks to Sander for taking time away from Traiteur to do this intereview. See y’all next week!

Today, we’re coming to you with our plan to get Traiteur into your hands on January 20th, 2017.

We need your help to do it, too!

Here’s the scoop

I just finished making an updated production timeline for our team and publisher, and I wanted to share some key dates with you.

They’ll correlate with the ability for us to post more in-game content on this blog, so you’ll know you can hold us accountable!

October 12th’s post will be your next look at the game itself! Starting then, we’ll have way more to show y’all overall!

November 16th’s blog post will be our biggest game showcase yet.

December 21st will be a Christmas present from us to you!

Throughout October, November, and December, we’ll be running lots of playtests. Lots! Want to help test Traiteur? Shoot us an email to info@raconteurgames.com with the subject line “Traiteur Playtester” and we’ll get you down to help!

At the beginning of January, we’ll launch a special thing on our website that will allow you to create your character before the game launches. Stay tuned!

Shortly after, during the week of January 10th, we will have our launch trailer

January 20th, you all get to jump into this wild, weird world of ours!

That’s our outline!

We need your help to make this possible, so make sure to email us about playtesting to join us on this wild journey.

Really?

… okay, we have SOMETHING to say.

Traiteur is undergoing a change. I talked about this last week – we’re streamlining the game to be more concise and focused.

This change is good. Very, very good!

Genuinely, I believe that this will be the best possible version of the game. We’re adding exciting new little features along the way, like the ability to select the coloration of your player’s emoticon as well as its faction (vertical vs. horizontal), while telling our story in a way that lends itself more to focused gameplay segments.

We have so many exciting things to show you very, very soon.

Moments like these, where we’re on the cusp of something very exciting, always makes me sit back and reflect on all the people who have helped us get to where we are.

To those who have followed us from the beginning into week 17, we thank you.

To those who are just now joining us — welcome!

Next week’s post will be way more exciting — I just wanted to take the time to say thank you for your time. :)

This week we’ll talk about something slightly less exciting but very real in all game development: the reality of production.

Strap in!

The Best Worst Thing

Recently, we had the first anniversary of our local IGDA chapter. We had a new crop of guests, primarily students, and we went around the room asking what role they currently – or aspire to – work in.

Artists and animators and programmers abounded, but no producers seemed to be present. I jokingly raise my hand and say, “Who wants to be a producer?!”

No one raised their hand, and then of course I have to say, “That makes sense. No one wants to tell people their dreams can’t make it into the game!”

Joke about it as I may, production, and the role of a producer, is tough work in game development. The producer’s job is to keep the project rolling and moving forward, mitigate obstacles and conflicts along the way.

In short, the producer has a key currency: time.

We initially set out to create a very concise, very specific kind of world in a very particular way. As it turns out, we found more people who could help bring that vision to life better than we imagined. Our 4-month project is now at month 9.

Faced with this, and also not wanting to work on a project for more than a year, we gave ourselves a hard deadline of January to launch the game. Now, we’re in the process of streamlining our vision to include the best, most engaging parts and cutting out the rest.

You may be wondering what this mean for us as developers, versus what it means for you as a player.

For us as developers, it’s painstaking. We have to cut down a vision we fell in love with in order to not be working on the game indefinitely. But, that’s what makes anything great: focusing on the core of what makes it an unforgettable experience.

It puts things in perspective, and teaches us about what to focus on the most in the future.

As a player, it may be seen as getting less content or getting a different version of the game. Out of context, those are both correct – you are getting a leaner, more concise version of our original vision. It’s a vastly improved version that you’ll enjoy far better than if it had been presented the way we originally imagined!

Hi there! Our blog post was delayed a day because we wanted to give a really nice breakdown of what we did last week.

If you follow us, you’ll know that we were rejected from showing our game at PAX, which was quite disappointing.

That didn’t stop us — so we built our own booth!

Here’s a breakdown of how it went.

From Thursday, September 1st – Monday, September 5th, we had just over1700 visitors to our virtual booth

Of these visitors, roughly80 signed up for our newsletter (about a 5% conversion, not bad!),

Over600 watched our cheesy pitch video

Around500 downloaded their free swag, a wallpaper — meaning nearly everyone who watched the video came back to get their swag!

We did a reddit AMA over Sunday and Monday, which gave a significant boost to traffic (about 50% came from reddit!)

It was a load of fun to watch all of this from our PJs, but it paved the way for another thought: Did we do better than if we were -actually- there on the show floor?

There are a lot of factors to consider (i.e. people passing by the booth but not stopping by, among other things), but let’s assume people spent just a minute or two at a booth, and our KPI (key performance indicator) is people learning about the game.

PAX was open a total of 51 hours over four days.

If the average person came up and spent two minutes at our booth (average time spent on the page was 1:23, and in local events people have spent longer, so we’ll assume 2 minutes), we would get 30 per hour.

Multiplied by 51, that’s 1530 possible people who could have come by the booth and learned about the game had we been there in person — by doing what we did, we got in front of more people than those who could have possibly spent time at a booth on the show floor, and with far less competition for attention!

Of course, being at PAX would have been great, and this is a very simple look at how things could have gone. But as I said last week, I don’t let anyone dictate my ability to be successful — we had to do something, and I think we responded in the best possible way!

What would I have done differently? Next time, I would definitely have included social buttons to capture more of our traffic and keep people in touch, as it’s less work to follow us on Twitter than signing up for a newsletter.

On top of that, I would create some kind of customized Twitter/Facebook social share option to let the world know you stopped by the booth. Given our conversion of people who signed up for the newsletter, roughly 5%, that could still be a sizable dent in impressions and future conversions coming from that.

Overall, I was extraordinarily pleased with how this turned out. We promoted the game, we got more people aware of Raconteur, and we did something that was a lot of fun — I mean just look at my fabulous pink jacket!

Tune in next week for more Traiteur goodness. Thanks for dropping by, and I hope you enjoyed it!

If you drop by, you can get a cheesy pitch video, a free piece of swag, more info about the game (including our fancy new Steam page!), and can even sign up for our special mystery surprise swag to be sent after the show!

You also get to see myself and our brand manager, Kathryn, in wonderful 2D cutout-like form! My pink jacket is ahead of its time, clearly.

This week is a short dev blog entry, focusing on a sneak peek at gameplay from an upcoming thing we’re doing!

Go go go!

We’re very thankful for our dev blog followers, so just for you, you can view the gameplay before anyone else! This won’t be posted anywhere until it goes live with a marketing promotion we’re doing next week during PAX, which we may need your help with – more info soon!

Welcome back to the twelfth (!) edition of the Traiteur Dev Blog! Today, we’ll be discussing how Raconteur works across a thousand miles — and usually more.

No falling into the sky

Excuse the lame Vanessa Carlton pun. It had to be done.

Now that that’s over with, let’s talk about TEAMWORK!

Raconteur is headquartered in Lafayette, Louisiana, but our team members span much more than a single location! People help us make games from these locations:

New York (state)

Illinois

Indiana

Georgia

California

Washington (state)

Iowa

London

We’ve got a diverse team with lots of different perspectives, and it makes creating games that much more interesting. But how on earth do we communicate across four time zones? Here’s how it works — I hope this can be of use to other developers who follow this blog!

We all communicate via Slack, a free messaging service. You can have public conversations with the whole group, private conversations through direct messages, and also create specific “channels” for discussion related to a single topic (as well as customizing it to have lots of optional add-ins and features!).

Two of my favorite channels at Raconteur are “bandnamesfromnickisms,” which pokes fun at the weird ways I phrase things by turning them into band names, and “batshitjackson,” a channel dedicated to random historical facts about the US’s most insane president, Andrew Jackson.

We then manage our files through Google Drive, where we store supplementary information — from design documents to certain assets to budgets and production timelines, it’s our go-to place to store information that can be easily accessed later.

But what happens when we need something more permanent, that’s not a chat room? We use Basecamp as a place for more permanent, forum-like discussion that the whole team should see. We also use it to assign our to-dos and objectives, so that everyone is on the same page and knows what to do next!

For big milestones, we’ll convene for a meeting over Skype or Hangouts, though we don’t usually have frequent meetings (because a meeting is always an activity, but rarely an actual solution!).

We manage our game’s files through BitBucket, a version control file repository. In software, it can be difficult to manage multiple peoples’ changes on a single project, which is why version control exists! Most devs are familiar with this, but if you aren’t, it’s a safe and secure system of managing lots of files and changes across many people. It’s much more efficient than, say, uploading the game files to Google Drive or using a VPN.

People can immediately grab your recent changes, work off of them, and upload their new changes too, all without causing much conflict with the core game files! If you’re an indie developer who hasn’t started using version control, we recommend using BitBucket in combination with SourceTree (which is a program that is basically an interface for the options one would use in version control manually through written commands).

Finally, this all connects through Google Apps! Drive, email, our shared group calendar where we post when we’ll be on, it all wraps together here.

What’s the process like?

Here is a corporate stock photo that does not fit, because TEAMWORK!

Let’s take a quick example. I’m (Nick) the “business guy” who runs Raconteur as a whole, but I’m not taking the helm on Traiteur — that’s Sander, our lead programmer! We make progress in one of two ways:

Sander will talk about his direction with the project currently, I give some extra feedback, and then he doles out objectives to other team members to make it happen; or,

Someone on the team takes initiative and fixes problems/knocks out work without any instruction!

One of the things I’m constantly impressed by at this company is how people genuinely believe in getting the job done, and often go above and beyond. We rarely have to explicitly tell someone to do something — so I guess our process works!

What happens if there’s a problem, though? Game development is complicated and no team is without hiccups and missteps.

One thing that I have always been fascinated with is building a team structure that can naturally solve problems. If there is a bug created by someone’s recent work, we take accountability to fix the issues we create. If there’s a disagreement, we take a step back and re-evaluate what the goal is, why people are taking the positions that they do, and come up with a mutually beneficial solution that takes our different views into account.

Oftentimes, we have to look at the problem from beyond the scope of our vision and also strongly take into account what the players want, rather than that we think they would want. That’s how we diagnosed and fixed hundreds of bugs and issues in our first game, Close Order — community involvement.

Fin!

That’s a wrap for this week’s post! I hope that this was an interesting insight into our processes, and can’t wait to have you back next week — we’ll have an exclusive insight just for you into an upcoming thing we’re planning!

Hello again as always! Welcome to the next rendition of the Traiteur development blog.

We skipped last week accidentally as a lot of us happened to be out of town at the same time — whoops! Won’t happen again. :)

This week, we’ve got a short and personal blog about facing fear and failure.

The Two F’s

There are two F words that I can’t stand: failure and fear.

Failure is something that makes no sense to me. I’ve never failed! To me, failure means you either 1) quit because it got too difficult, or 2) did not get your desired outcome and learned nothing in the process. By that philosophy, I have never failed.

Why am I making this the focus of our blog this week?

We were rejected (again) from showcasing a game at PAX, and of course it was Traiteur.

Objectively speaking, we feel that Traiteur is a very special game that will captivate a lot of people and also that Raconteur is offering a lot to our local and global community in addition to our games. Even then, we did not meet whatever expectations were being held in order to be showcased.

This is something that feels like hitting a brick wall. After all we went through with Close Order being in a small market (and also being rejected from numerous conventions), we had never felt so confident that Traiteur was something unique and in demand.

To face failure again like this was very unexpected, and put a damper on my day. Was this going to be a repeat of the past?

This brings me to the other topic of today: fear.

Zig Ziglar, the famous speaker who we pay tribute to in Traiteur, has a famous quote about fear. “Fear means two things: forget everything and run… or face everything and rise. The choice is yours.”

While this can feel like a crushing defeat, we aren’t fearing failure — we’re facing it. We’ve already devised a marketing campaign to run around the same time as PAX that I feel is even better than being on the show floor!

On top of that, the game is truly coming together in a fantastic way, and when the aforementioned campaign runs around the beginning of September, you’ll finally get to see it in all of its glory.

Today, we have failed. And that’s a wonderful thing to experience.

Here’s to the next one, which brings us another step closer to success.

Happy Wednesday as always, and welcome back to the Traiteur development blog!

This week, to celebrate blog #10, we don’t have a formal update on the game or when you can buy it or anything like that.

Instead, this week we’ll take a moment to talk about why we do this.

Gather ’round the campfire!

Why?

It all started when I was four years old. I was playing Super Mario World on my brother’s SNES — he left for school 30 minutes before I did, meaning I got to play “his” console without him knowing. Now, I was four years old and not very good at video games — but that didn’t stop me.

From that early age, games captured me. I knew this was a way that we could tell new and innovative kinds of stories, and I made the decision to be a game developer at that very moment.

There was a long journey in-between then and now, but two highlights stick out, and I’d like to share them with you.

The first one is a sort of series of events. I’ve talked before about a mentor I had at Gearbox Software named Aaron. You can read the whole story at that link, but to make a long story short, Aaron let me job shadow him and also taught me a lot about production, the industry, and being a professional in general.

We meet every summer when I’m in Dallas for QuakeCon, and last year we only had a small time slot in which to meet. He asked me how things were going, I told him what I learned, and I told him my plan for if things didn’t work out — if we’re successful, then we have great jobs, and if not, we have the experience to get great jobs.

Without skipping a beat, he smiles and says, “Or you could try again.”

The other happened early into knowing my other mentor, Zach. I was talking to him about what failure might mean. In his infinite salesman-like stature, he proudly said, “I’ve never failed.” Of course, this gets your attention and you ask how that’s possible. What he said helped mold my perspective on the world today.

“To me, failure means that either A) you gave up because it got too difficult and you could have pushed a little further, or B) you didn’t get the outcome you wanted and learned nothing from it. By that account, I’ve never failed!”

I will never forget either of those moments as long as I live, because the two wonderful mentors I’ve been blessed to have known taught me something so pivotal: life is about perspective.

We could spend our time focusing on what could have been, or how things should have been done differently… or we can move on to the next thing, taking our learning with us and making something even more badass in the process.

At Raconteur, we choose to do the latter, and with Traiteur, I’ve never been so confident about something in my life. It recaptures that very first moment when I decided I wanted to make games and tell different kinds of stories.

I think this is going to be something like you’ve never seen before, and next week, I’ll show you our first official glimpse into the game through a video walkthrough!

Thank you all so much for following us for ten weeks — it’s only going to get even more exciting from here!

If you have anything else you’d like to ask, feel free to comment below or Tweet us! We love hearing from you, and hope you’ll join us to kick some ASCII… alright, I’m done, I promise!

Q: What kind of game is this?

In the most humble way possible, Traiteur is a Raconteur kind of game: something that’s a strange combination of ideas with a heavy focus on narrative. It’s a top-down shooter set in an ASCII world where war is erupting, and you seek out a mythical figure to help stop the conflict. It’s been described as “An ASCII quest for human understanding”! (Thanks to our sound designer Elise Kates for that!)

If you like top-down shooters, you’ll love Traiteur. If you like a good story, you’ll enjoy every second of it. If you like really weird things, this will be an awesome experience for you — and so much more! Check out more on gameplay here.

Q: Will there be any kind of skill trees or unlocks?

Apart from the two core abilities (standard “shoot as fast as you can click” shot, and a charged shot) there will be a few other abilities that are made available to the player as they progress through the narrative. There is no formal skill tree or unlock system, though if you fully explore every nook and cranny and talk to everyone you see, you might just find something extra!

Ghosts in the Forest level can be spooky!

Q: Is it a roguelike?

Not exactly! If anything, it’s a rogue-lite as it does possess some of the basic similarities. Overall, the first question answers this best!

Q: Is it a shooter?

If you’re referring to a top-down shooter, then yes! However, we do have more than shooting at things.

Q: Is it going to JUST be shooting at things?!

Nope! We have hub/safe areas full of NPCs that also include side stories (I hesitate to call them side “quests” because they’re usually very simple), puns, and overall fun shenanigans.

Q: Is this the spiritual successor to Cooking Mama? Also, you spelled “Traitor” wrong.

Not at all, though kudos to knowing the traditional continental French definition of Traiteur! :) The name of the game is definitely spelled right, too! We explain the meaning behind our name in this blog post.

Q: One word: Why?

At Raconteur, we’re inspired by very unique and strange things. Traiteur is the result of wanting to make something very special with a lot of heart, and it’s also a proving grounds for us: we finished and shipped one game before, and we’re still trying to prove to ourselves that we can keep doing it!

An early gif showcasing combat (enemies are placeholder here and not final; see the previous screen for more final art!).

Q: Is there multiplayer?

There is no multiplayer in Traiteur. It is very much a single-player experience.

Q: When and where can I buy it?

Traiteur is coming to Steam later this year! If you follow our blog every Wednesday, you’ll be the first to know when our Steam page goes live.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, I ask you to share it with one friend. :) As mentioned earlier, leave us any questions in the comments below or Tweet us!

See you next week. As always, don’t forget to sign up for the newsletter!

I originally wanted to show you more of the game in motion this week, but we’re still finalizing some of the prettier things that will make showing it off much more exciting.

Instead, this week I want to get a little personal — we’ll be talking about why we chose the name Traiteur.

What’s in a name?

As a concept, it came about during the final months of our initial game debut, Close Order.

Traiteur was originally a small prototype about emoticons going to war in a world built from ASCII symbols. Our narrative that sprung up from those bare-bone roots was built around a lone emoticon embarking on a quest to save the land from destruction.

In south Louisiana, Cajun folklore tells stories of “traiteurs,” who were faith healers. These healers existed for centuries, and were highly revered in Cajun culture. For the people who lived in our region known as Acadiana as early as decades ago, the nearest hospital may have been many miles away — meaning that no doctors were close by, and access to medical care could be virtually nonexistent.

People turned to the local traiteur (“traiteuse” is the female version) for alternative healing in those situations. The healer usually performed the laying on of hands, and purportedly could heal toothaches, earaches, warts, bleeding, and more.

Now, with the pervasiveness of modern medicine and ease of access to healthcare, very few traiteurs and traiteuses exist. Tradition dictates that the knowledge must be passed down to someone of the opposite gender to continue the practice, so it can be very easy for the tradition to not be able to be passed on.

Most importantly out of all this, though, is that the traiteur/traiteuse must be asked to perform the healing — and only when the need is great.

For us, Traiteur is the result of our asking if we could “really” make games. It’s about healing.

It’s healing after a long and challenging first project. Close Order did well enough to fund Traiteur, and at the end of the day that’s all we could ask for. However, our efforts are still very much a lean hustle towards our dreams (we all work other jobs in addition to Raconteur).

Traiteur is our healing. It’s not just a game; it’s proof, to us, that we can do this. It’s tangible validation of what we think we can do with a story. It’s a concrete demonstration of what a Raconteur game can be, and we’re damn proud to be able to bring this to life.

We may not be a large or famous studio, but we believe – and I believe, too – with every fiber of our collective being that this is something truly unique and special.

My humble hope is that you’ll feel the same way, too, when you get to play the game later this year. I genuinely hope that you feel the same spark of joy and laughter that I felt the very first time I experienced the game’s opening.

In summary…

This week was more personal than normal, and I hope you enjoyed learning more about our strange little project.

I look forward to giving you more insight into the game next week!

As always, it was a pleasure having you with us — can’t wait to see you again next week. :)

Q: Tell us a little about yourself and what you do!A: I’m a freelance audio engineer and sound designer based in Seattle, WA. I’ve lent my ears to all sorts of projects over the years, but all of that has led to a focus on creating sound design for indie games. I’m constantly collecting new sounds, whether it’s through field recordings, random stuff I find in thrift shops and antique stores, or just stuff I have in my pantry! I use a lot of imagination to smash them all together and create something new for whatever I’m working on

Q: What inspired you to want to work with Raconteur on Traiteur?A: The importance they placed on a game’s story really spoke to me, both as a developer and a player. All the games that I really love had a great story at their core, and built a world around that. This team is also incredibly passionate and truly believes in what they are creating. I knew that we came into games with a similar spirit, and that if we put our heads together, we could create something really special and fulfilling.

Q: Describe the game in 10 words or less.A: An ASCII quest for human understanding.

Q: How does an ASCII aesthetic affect the sound style and overall atmosphere for what you’re creating?A: It really sets the tone for the game, and the fact that we’ve chosen not to go with the 8 bit sound aesthetic sets a really interesting challenge. I have to think about how I can match the whimsy and wonder of the art, but not make it so cute or sci-fi that it feels like I haven’t been dropped into a real world. What do real, adorable, deadly weapons sound like?

Q: What’s the most unique and/or strangest thing you’ve experienced thus far on the project?A: This team’s passion is certainly infectious! It’s been a really fun creative process to figure out how to make these sounds. Nick will give me keywords to draw from in most cases, and I’ll take those and figure how to create what we need. It’s led to a lot of really fun sound experiments, with everything from toucan squawks to ribbon synths!

Q: Why on earth do you think someone should play this game when it’s done?!A: There are echoes of a lot of games and stories from my childhood that made me feel nostalgic despite the fact that I’ve never played a game like this before. It makes for a really unique experience, and the wonderful story surrounding the world makes you ask a lot of big questions about human nature, without even realizing it!

Thanks to Elise for being the star of this week’s blog post! You can learn more about her work at her website.

We hope you’ve gotten more insight into Traiteur.

Tune in next week for a continued look into the game’s production and our processes.

As always, the #1 way to get Traiteur news is through our newsletter! Sign up if you liked what you read.